Europol cracked down today and arrested 34 people and questioned 101 concerning a DDoS-for-hire service.

Those arrested, most under 30, are accused of renting DDoS booters (also called DDoS stressors) in order to attack gaming providers, government agencies, internet hosting companies, schools and colleges.

The operation was codenamed Operation Tarpit and had the assistance of law enforcement agencies from Australia, Belgium, France, Hungary, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.

At the heart of the investigation was the DDoS service run by a UK teen, Grant Manser, 20, of Kidderminster, who ran such DDoS-for-hire services called Netspoof. He also ran three other DDoS booter services such as Dejabooter, Vexstresser, and Refinedstresser.

Authorities said that Manser made $63,200 from his services and got so popular that he had to hire support personnel. His sites had 12,800 registered users, of which 400 bought his tools, launching 603,499 DDoS attacks on 224,548 targets.

Source: Bleeping Computer